Monday, January 9, 2017

Fort Rock 2017: interviews with Chevelle and Mastodon

The 2017 bands for the Fort Rock Festival include Chevelle, Seether, Def Leppard, Alter Bridge, Papa Roach, Three Days Grace, In This Moment, Motionless in White, Cover Your Tracks, Nothing More, and Beartooth on Saturday, April 29th. On Sunday, April 30, the lineup features Soundgarden, A Perfect Circle, The Offspring, Mastodon, Highly Suspect, The Pretty Reckless, In Flames, Eagles of Death Metal, All That Remains, Starset, Dinosaur Pile-Up, I Prevail and Goodbye June.

With anticipation growing, I wanted to do a throwback with interviews from Chevelle and Mastodon, followed by a recap of last year's Fort Rock Festival.

Chevelle:

I met up
with Chevelle in Detroit, chatting with them for the first time since touring
with them on Ozzfest.Being a month
since I had seen the guys or their bus driver, it was hard to get down to
business.Drummer Sam and lead man Pete
ate Detroit’s finest Kentucky Fried Chicken as we joked on the bus, wasting
time waiting for bassist Joe to get his White Castle dinner, and informing me
that the brothers wanted to mess with people by putting Chevelle as their last
name on the album instead of Loeffler.Having limited time before the guys went on stage, we started with the
basics while waiting for Joe’s arrival.

Marisa:Let’s start
from the beginning.Tell me about your
family.Do you come from a musical
family?

Pete:We had piano
lessons while we were young.That’s how
we got started.It was a good basis to
hear notes and to figure out how the music is put together.Nobody else in our family is doing anything
musical.

Sam:The three of us
just started playing.It wasn’t like a
Jackson Five kind of thing.Nobody else
in our family is into the business except the three of us, and that’s on
purpose.

Marisa:With all of
you being not only related but brothers, do you think that this causes any more
or less complications compared to playing with friends?

Pete:We have our
share of fights.It’s not fists any
more.They’re emotional, and that’s
worse.They’re more stressful than
banging away at each other and moving on.These last longer.

Sam:I don’t know if
it’s a bonus, but only the three of us have been in the band.It’d be nice to have someone not related that
we could fire (Jokes are cracked about mom saying they can’t fire one
another).That’s stress, but no matter
what, I think that whatever you’re best at, it’ll find you.It’s not like we sat down when we were little
and planned to get signed and make a record.It just happened.

Pete:I wanted to be
a pro skater when I was 15.Music just
went over all my other aspirations.

Sam:Now I aspire to
make a living.

Pete:We did carpentry
before this, so we know what it means to make a living.

Marisa:(Joe walks in
with his fast food dinner) Now that we have all three of you, I think it’s time
to start in on some of my fun, dumb questions that I ask simply because I
can.They have absolutely nothing to do
with music, just psychological.The
first question is if you were a unicorn, and you could be any color but white,
what color would you be and why?

Joe:White (laughs).

Marisa:Nope.Wrong answer.Try again.Most people think of a
unicorn as being white, so the question is designed to see what color comes to
mind outside the norm.

Sam:Dark muddy
grey.I’d be depressed, because I was a
unicorn.

Joe:Red, because
it’s faster and more expensive on your insurance.

Pete:Can I say
clear?I think it’d be cool to see the
organs.

Marisa:The second
question is if you were a yogurt, would you be mixed fruit, fruit on the bottom
and what flavor?Keep in mind that it
does not have to be a traditional flavor.

Sam:I’d be fruit on
the floor.It’d be clear yogurt –
unicorn flavored.

Joe:There’d be no
fruit, but I’d be lemon or vanilla flavored.

Marisa:Isn’t lemon a
fruit?

Joe:Well, the flavor
would be mixed throughout.There’d be no
chunks.The chunks take away from the
protein, so it’d be high in protein.

Pete:I like
strawberry banana fruit on the bottom, because I like the traditional Dannon
fruit on the bottom.

Marisa:What flavor
potato chip best describes your personality?

Sam:Dirt flavored potato
chips.

Pete:BBQ.

Joe:Hot dill pickle.

Marisa:What’s your
biggest musical fantasy?

Sam:Ginger Rogers.

Joe:Me and her are
walking along.She looks at me and says,
“you look pretty good, Baby.”

Sam:To have one of
our songs be the music for a merry-go-round.To just walk up, put your kid on it and be like, “hey, I wrote that…”

Pete:Or get into an
elevator and hear it.Just to bump into
Brittany Spears.I’d be like Billy Joel
when I’m older, just be sitting there, hear your song playing and say, “oh
yeah, I used to write music…”

Sam:(More joking and
giggles) Check out theonion.com.

Marisa:Getting back
to some halfway serious questions…Each
of you describe one of your songs.It
doesn’t have to be a favorite or anything, but describe something about the
song that is special to you, whether it’s a cool part you play, crowd reaction,
you wrote it for your dead cat, whatever.

Pete:We actually did
write a song for our dead cat.His name
was Tom.(Looking at tour manager Dan) I
thought you prepped her.Didn’t you tell
her not to mention the dead cat during the interview?

Sam:One song I like
is off our first record.It’s called
“Law.”The song has got so many
parts.It’s just very challenging to
play well.The meter goes up and
down.The timing changes.That’s cool for me.

Dan:Pete plays with
his ego riser toolbox to be another foot taller.Every show it’s the same toolbox.You’ll see it up on stage tonight.

Pete:This one song,
“Point Number One,” the driving starts calm, then explodes.I always look over and see Joe doing the
signature move.We head bang together,
and it always happens, just because it feels right.There’s a few other sections in and out of
that, then I take off my guitar, bash it, and throw out yogurt and unicorns
into the audience.

Joe:I just stand
there, and I rock and play to that one song.

Marisa:Where would
you envision yourself being right now if you were not doing what you are doing.

Pete:A
locksmith.Did I say locksmith?I meant astronaut.A locksmith astronaut.I’d put on the suit and fix space ships for
aliens.I’d fix their monolift and shoot
over to sector 7.

Joe:I’d be a rock
star.

Dan:He’d be a race
car driver.

Joe:In my other life
I’d be a rock star.I am a race car
driver, but in my other life, I’d be a rock star.Some people think it’s the other way around,
but it’s not.

Sam:I’d be a bus
driver.A hermit bus driver.

Marisa:From starting
out in the basement, garage, or wherever you first played, coming up to where
you are now in your musical careers, was there anything you ran across that you
did not expect?

Sam:I didn’t expect
to be hosed as much as we were.I didn’t
expect people to really be as dishonest as they really are…Dan!

Pete:I didn’t expect
it to be so expensive to tour.You don’t
make a living; you spend money.

Joe:I didn’t expect
it at this level, with as many videos as we’ve had on MTV and everything.You see the bus and assume, but…

Marisa:Do you have
any advice for musicians starting out or for people in general?

Sam:Go to
college.Have something to fall back on
just because.

Joe:Stop slacking
and have something to fall back on, because you will fail miserably.

Pete:If you think
you want to get serious, get management first.Someone who believes in you and you trust, even though they say you
can’t trust anybody.

Sam:If you’re
playing, play for people to hear, not just to play.Play every show no matter how un-important.

Pete:We were playing
this BBQ, and we met a guy that worked at a club.He put us on a bill that put us on the
scene.We played a waste of time BBQ,
and that was our big break.

Marisa:What kinds of
things do you guys have coming up?

Sam:Play shows and
be a huge success.

Pete:We’re going
overseas to Australia and Japan at some point.We look forward to smelling the people.I don’t know where we’ll be even the next day, because things fall apart
so fast.We’re only booked through the
end of the month.We are lining other
things up, but nothing is confirmed.We’ll just spend money.

Dan:There’s rumors
that they may do an MTV2 guest VJ spot or possibly being one of the bands with
another music television’s idea to have bands living in a house with other
bands.

Marisa:Since we’re running
tight on time, I’ll try to get a little of your influences in with this last
question.If you could play with anyone,
dead or alive, in any place, where would you play and who would it be with?

Pete:Helmet with
Local H opening on the sidewalk with Evil Knevil jumping over them while
they’re playing.

Joe:I would have The
Beetles as an opening act.I think we’re
big enough now that we’d do a headlining tour with them opening in any typical
8 or 9,000 seat arena.There’d also be
85 Bears, Korn and the old Rage Against The Machine.

Sam:I think I’d have
Milli Vanilli opening.I’d like to at
some point play with Radiohead, so we’d play with them.Where?I like clubs, so I’d say the Warfield in San Fransico.

With previous albums Remission, Leviathan, Blood
Mountain, and Crack the Sky, exploring the earth's elements,
Mastodon's The Hunter, promotes following free will.With songs on the album and the name of the
album dedicated in memory to lives lost, The Hunter stands apart from
their previous work.Catching up with
the Atlanta boys, Brann Dailor inspired more than a little
laughter with time travel and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Author Marisa Williams:What is your home town, and is that where you live now?

Brann Dailor, drummer/vocalist of Mastodon:I consider to have two home towns, which is
great.I love Rochester, New York, where
I was born and raised.I love going back
there to see my mom, grandparents, cousins and old friends.I lived there until I was 21 or 22, then
moved away.That place, and Atlanta,
Georgia, which is where I have lived over 13 or 14 years now.I met my wife here.I moved here having never come here before,
then all these great things happened to me; I love it here.It's my home, and I always excited to get
home and play home my town, that way I can just drive over to my house and
sleep in my own bed.The crowd is good
to us.People complain about home town
shows sometimes, like they don't get the great reaction at home when they are
huge everywhere else, but that's the opposite here.

Marisa:How did you
get started in music?Did you come from
a musical family?What were your biggest
musical influences?

Mastodon:I came from
a musical family.My grandparents played
in a country group during the early 50s, traveled to Nashville, had to make it
down there.After that, after they had
broken up, my grandmother played in another band, and my grandfather played in
a band called Cinnamon Road, which my uncle also played in.They would practice in the attic in my
grandparent's house, and I would always end up in the attic at 3- and
4-years-old, playing the drums, obviously.I think kids gravitate towards that, as there's a lack of dexterity for
guitar at that age, but I always liked drums.As I got older, I played in bands with the drums as my instrument.My mom played in a band.She was the singer, and her boyfriend was
drummer, so we had drums in our living room, which was a big deal.It was hard to get around when little, as I
couldn't reach the foot pedals.My dad
was into jazz and grog rock.My dad was
very much into music.He was just
talking to me today about music; he's on top of stuff, even to this day.It's a cool thing to connect with your father
with music; it's definitely a gift.

Marisa:Do you play
any other instruments besides drums?

Mastodon:I play a
little guitar.When I was like 9, I got
one for Christmas, but I was not as good as Randy Rhodes when I first picked it
up, so I got frustrated and went back to drums, but I've played around.I have rhythm, and can do riffs, but I
translate them to Brent, who makes them sound good.

Marisa:How do you go
about writing music?What comes first
for you: drums, guitars, vocals or something else?Has the process of writing changed for you
over the years at all?

Mastodon:When I start
writing, it's usually already completely realized in my head.I try to imagine a vocal pattern over top of
it, but all the music comes first.Music
comes first, and the vocals are thrown into and over top of the music.We write lyrics up to end of the
process.I'll be next to the vocal
booth, writing, and I will hand off lyrics that they sing, so the writing is
decidedly unorthodox, but it works for us.

Marisa:What's the
coolest thing about your latest project?

Mastodon:There's
nothing inherently cool about it, but I like the direction of the new material
we're working on.It's all over the
place, and I like that about it.It's
new, different and shiny; it's fun to play so far.I like the new Mastodon material. Around
September, we will probably be recording it,and after that we will release the new work.I like new stuff, as most musicians do.We're recording and perfecting that.

Marisa:You wrote a
song for the upcoming movie Monsters University?

Mastodon:They just
used an older song, off of Leviathan actually.The movie came out on Friday, so you can go
see about two seconds of Mastodon music.I believe they used Iceland off of Leviathan.I saw it on Friday; it was funny.

Marisa:The latest
album is named in memorial to Brad Hinds.How did the news come of his death, and how did the band come up with
the idea on how to memorialize him?

Mastodon:It was
obvious in the writing of the album; it was the obvious thing to do.He was a hunter, so we called it The
Hunter.I guess I wouldn't say it
was what defines Brad, but it was a major part of his life, a personal thing
for him and Brent.We felt that it was
what needed to be done for his family and for him.We care very deeply for each other as friends
and musical companions, and we knew it was the right thing to do.

Marisa:What is the
scariest thing about being on the road?

Mastodon:I guess all
the fights.Maybe some of the food at
catering, as you never know what's in there.If you fly a lot, there's the chance to blow up, of you coming down at
an inopportune time.There's that.I would hate to die on tour.Chances are my wife isn't going to be there,
so that would suck.

Marisa:Career high
and low point so far?

Mastodon:Hopefully I
haven't experienced either yet.

Marisa:What's your
favorite way to travel and why?

Mastodon:I'd say in
my lady's dune buggy; it's a lot of fun to ride around in that thing.

Marisa:What's your
favorite place to travel to, and is there anywhere you have not been to that
you would like to go to?

Mastodon:My favorite
place?I like my house, because I've
been all over the place.I love Russia,
Greece, I really love Turkey, Egypt, Brazil and Costa Rica, Mexico, and the
list goes on and on, but my house is fairly awesome, so when I get back, it is
a breath of fresh air.On my bucket list
is the Dominica Island – not the Dominican Republic - but where the sperm
whales go in like March, so I'd like to go there when they're all swimming
around and hanging out: it's a small coast of majestic creatures as they swim
and play in waters.

Marisa:What's your
biggest musical fantasy?

Mastodon:I'd love to
see Genesis perform all together in 1974.I wonder if they'll ever perfect time travel?Wouldn't it suck if you could only go back
like two weeks?We just got in this, but
we can only go back to two weeks ago; still, it's kinda weird, but nobody would
questions your outfit.

Marisa:If you were
an unicorn, and you could be any color but white, what color would you be and
would you have any special powers?

Mastodon:Uh...I
guess I'd be hot pink.That seems the
most logical color for a unicorn, even better than white.Don't unicorns have special powers?Can they cure cancer?Can they cure herpes?Their horn, if you grind up and rub it on
your cold sore, it'd go right away.I
don't get cold sores, by the way, thanks to the majestic unicorn.

Marisa:If you were
yogurt, would you be mixed fruit, fruit on the bottom, what flavor and why?

Mastodon:I'd be
Greek yogurt, because that's really popular, and I want to be popular.You see Jamie Lee Curtis with Activia, and
isn't that Greek yogurt?Jamie Lee
Curtis... you saw Trading Places, right?I'd just be Greek flavored, and what's that?A sweaty mustache covered in hair???They're hairy, the Greek people; sorry.

Mastodon:Not
really.I don't hide any of my
talents.It's quite apparent, but I can
do the moonwalk really good.Ask my
grandmother.She'll tell ya.I used to be really good at coloring as
well.I can color anything.Set me up with a box of crayons.

Marisa:What's the
most important thing to remember?

Mastodon:I don't
know, I forget.

Marisa:What's your
most inspirational moment?

Mastodon:I was
messing around in the bathroom, standing on toilet, and I fell down and hit my
head on bathtub.When I came to, I
thought of time travel and the flux capacitor; I had an epiphany.I had an epiphany about Tiffany in the mall.

Marisa:If you were
not doing music, what would you be doing?

Mastodon:Probably
working at a cool mini-mart or something.I was really good at ringing people up for snack items and jerky and
cigarettes and coffee, making sure things were stocked, making sure hot dogs
come off in a timely hour, and making sure the nacho cheese doesn't get that
disgusting film all over it.

Marisa:What are
three things you must have with you when you are on the road?

Mastodon:Pants.I already said pants, right?Flowbee, it's a personal hair-cutting
machine.It keeps your hair all nice and
trimmed.Basically, it's like a hair
trimmer with a vacuum.It collects hair,
and you can make hair art, or weave a t-shirt, arts and crafts.There's a lot of hours in the day to knit a
shirt.Flowbee, pants, and at least
25-40 t-shirts.

Bill Kelliher, guitarist of Mastodon, talks about touring
and their album Once More 'Round The Sun.

Author Marisa Williams:Mastodon's new album Once More 'Round The Sun is coming out in
June, but what else can people expect from the band in the near future?

Mastodon:Lots of
touring, possibly a new video for “High Road.” We've been on tour, and we
finished the record a month and a half ago, so we're prepping to play those
songs live.We're playing two of them
live now.We're preparing for Europe,
summer festivals, and a lot of stuff.

Marisa:How do you go
about writing music?What comes first
for you: drums, guitars, vocals or something else?Has the process of writing changed for you
over the years at all?

Mastodon:I just try
to play guitar as much as humanly possible on the road.There's one always nearby, so play as much as
I can.In the past, we were writing at
home when not on tour, all together in one room, and I find it easier now.When home from tour, I'm busier than when on
tour, so with kids and family and obligations, I learned how to use Pro
Tools.When I write and come up with
something, I come up with it right then and there. I use a little drum machine, add bass to it,
like a portable studio.When home from
tour, I find I have a collection of riffs with drum beats, and that's how it
has changed.I didn't have a computer
before, or know how to use the software, so I had saved it for the studio or
being at home.

Marisa:What is your
favorite musical technique?

Mastodon:In
Mastodon, we tune down a full step.It
gives us a full range of heavier sound.We drop tune from B to C and E to A, which gives us the ability to write
a heavier riff.When Brann hums a riff
to me, if it's not heavy enough, we change the tuning of the guitar, which
makes it sound completely different.It
opens up a whole new world to tune differently for a different riff.Changing strings around, it's new
tuning.Right now, we have four or five
tunings that we use.

Marisa:What's
something that people might not expect on the new album?

Marisa:Mastodon is
getting ready to head overseas after Rock on the Range, then you will be
returning back for Bonnaroo, and heading back out overseas; where are you most
excited about playing overseas, and in your opinion, how does music scene
differ in America versus in other countries?

Mastodon:Playing big
festivals in the U.K. is always exciting, as the bands are wild and
ravage.They're huge, like The Download,
or Reading and Leeds Festivals in the U.K..They're always packed with people no matter what, rain or shine.It's a little different from American
audiences.They love rain and bad
weather, because they're used to it.They can be waste deep in mud and water, and they're willing to watch
their favorite band play, no matter what.They'll slide around in the mud. We're also playing two shows in
Russia.Those fans are diehard.They keep chanting your name forever after
the show.It's a totally different part
of the world, very different from America.We take a lot of things for granted.There's things we bitch and complain about, but their tough.They have political wars, they're restricted
and oppressed, but they still come together over music.It's a totally different world over there
than it is here.

Marisa:Some of
Mastodon's music has had an almost story-like quality to it.Does this new album carry on that tradition,
or can you share some of the ideas behind it?

Mastodon:This record
isn't really telling a story.It's more
like loosely based on time and life.In
the four of our lives, it's a window of time in the band Mastodon, the four of
us as individuals.It's a personal
story, not like reading a book, a biography, or something like that.It's not a story per say, more of the things
that have happened, emotions and things like that.

Marisa:How did you
get started in music?Did you come from
a musical family?What were your biggest
musical influences?

Mastodon:My father
owned a Hi-fi business in New York.That
was his work.I remember when the first
CDs came out.I thought it was a live
band; it was so clear.I always had
records and music around, but my dad and I didn't have same musical tastes.He was into jazz.I was more into punk rock and rebellious
music.My dad first bought me a record
of U2's War.My dad came from
Ireland.He thought I would like it,
because it was politically motivated.I
listened to a lot of The Edge, U2, Exploited, Black Flag, Johnny Ramone and
simpler but cranked up heavy guitar stuff.I moved onto Slayer, Metallica, Sound Garden, Nirvana, and more poppier
stuff.I really listened to a lot of
Dead Kennedy's and Bad Brains, so I was influenced by that.

Marisa:What was your
first concert that you attended, and how did that compare to the first concert
that you played?

Mastodon:My first
concert was Ted Nugent and Areosmith at Rochester Community War Memorial, where
I was this morning actually.I thought
it was amazing.I thought Ted Nugent
brought out a girl from the crowd.He
stripped her down, and she was wearing this hot nurse's outfit.He laid her on a table that came from out of
nowhere, and pretended to have sex with her.Being 14 or 15, I thought it was real and thought that was what happened
at concerts.My first real show was
around high school, and it was no comparison at all, just a couple high school
buddies.We put on a talent show at high
school.I guess, thinking about it, part
of me felt awesome to be the one on stage with people watching me.I started getting that feeling that it feels
right.I thought that's what Aerosmith
and Ted Nugent felt like, but I didn't think I'd achieve anything that large,
didn't think my band would be as big as that ever.

Marisa:What is the
scariest thing about being on the road?

Mastodon:I would have
to say a bus accident; that'd be terrible.

Marisa:What's your
biggest musical fantasy?

Mastodon:Riding some
tasty waves and jamming with The Stones, from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Marisa:If you were
an unicorn, and you could be any color but white, what color would you be and
would you have any special powers?

Mastodon:I'd be
plaid.My power would be flying.I think that would be first.A flying plaid unicorn would be sick.

Marisa:Do you have
any hidden talents or special skills?

Mastodon:I'm a
break-dancing ninja.

Marisa:What was your
most influential moment?

Mastodon:Probably
the birth of my sons.

Marisa:What are
three things you must have with you when you are on the road?

Mastodon:Socks,
Underwear and a t-shirt.

Marisa:Any advice
for musicians starting out?

Mastodon:Stay in
school.

For more information on the Fort Rock Festival, visit www.fortrockfestival.com, and here's a few performances to look forward to this year: